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Let’s face it, running a business in today’s world is a formidable endeavor: change and disruption have become the new norm. In an effort to keep up, innovation is at the top of every executive’s priority list and new innovation methodologies, training and strategies are available every day. But is all the hype really helpful while Western businesses and policy-makers are working under an outdated paradigm?

In his new book, Platform Disruption Wave, Haydn Shaughnessy says that modern enterprises need to explore a new way of doing business—one that embraces continuous improvement, self-learning, horizontal structures and diversified ecosystems, rather than individual achievement and the hero’s journey. If they fail to do so, the U.S. and Europe will start to see a major power shift to the East, and not in 20 years time—this process has already begun and the effects are at our doorstep.

At a time when organisations are plugging more effort into innovation, Gerard Harkin has written a book called ‘Innovation Unplugged’. Why? As he puts it himself, Gerard is on a mission to make innovation more effective by ‘unplugging’ from the hype, confusion and ‘gobbledygook’ that are so prevalent today, and return to the basic principles of innovation, and its role in enabling business growth.

One of the first things that struck me about Innovation Unplugged is that it’s different from the standard 250-page business book. Innovation Unplugged is a ‘30 minute read’ and is refreshingly free from complex innovation models and stage gate processes.

Across the eight short chapters Harkin covers everything from how to match your corporate ambitions with your innovation goals, to practical advice on setting up major innovation programmes.

Chapter 1 discusses the importance of profitable innovation and why responsibility for innovation should be shared across the management team.

Chapter 2 highlights the vast range of innovation options available to help a business to grow. Harkin paints a clear picture why technology companies should not limit themselves to technological or product innovation. He also stresses the importance of articulating the big and small challenges facing a business, before commencing an innovation programme.

LEGO has earned the right to celebrate. Not only are kids playing with more mini LEGO people than there are human beings on the planet (Delingpole J, 2009) but in 2015, they were nominated by Forbes as the most powerful brand in the world. For a company which was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2004, the toy maker has made an amazing turnaround. They restructured, hired a new CEO, and forged more licensing partnerships than ever before. Most importantly, they discovered the secret to some of the world’s most successful, low risk innovation strategies.

These strategies helped LEGO create a powerful brand envied by every other company in the world. However, successes like these are not, and need not be, restricted to global companies with billions in revenue. The point of low risk innovation tools is that one can use them to test ideas in any setting and with any budget. Whether you are a cash strapped startup or a Forbes 500 firm, sustainable innovation can be your ticket to success.

Out of LEGO’s lessons and that of hundreds of other companies, I have distilled the most successful techniques to innovate cheaply and effectively. They are all contained in the book Innovation Tools and, as an additional bonus, the readers of the Innovation Management community can get it for free this week. Among others, my book answers questions regarding how strategies used by companies like LEGO are able to turn companies around from looming bankruptcy to industry leading success.

Someone once told me this: “Innovation is like an apparition of the Virgin Mary: one person saw her, but everyone talks about it.” Although funny, the quote aptly captures an attitude towards innovation that exists in many companies today. Innovation – and the skills that enable it – are sometimes considered as mystical gifts, preserved for the chosen few. In other cases, innovation is feared, because it involves unregulated processes, risk taking and investments with unpredictable outcomes.

Innovation. The word is tossed around carelessly, and is repeatedly illustrated with the same few business cases. Some of the usual suspects include autonomous transport (Google, Tesla), wearable tech (Apple) and of course … the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb).

Innovation is a business discipline

A lot of business leaders know they want innovation, yet they struggle to define what it actually means to them. Simply put, innovation is about making changes that add business value, in terms of either revenue growth or increased operational efficiency. This value can be created in four ways:

Carly Fiorina, Former CEO at HP, talks about the dynamics of change and fear. She notes that entrepreneurship is about risk-taking, and this is always associated with trying something new. Fiorina concludes by asserting that change involves gathering enough energy and force to overcome the power of status quo.

So what do I know about change? First thing I know is that everybody is afraid of something. Everybody is afraid of something. All of you are afraid of something. All of us are afraid of something. What distinguishes people who are successful in their life from those who are not is what do you do with your fear.

The essence of business is risk taking. Taking a risk is all about trying something new. And yet as people go on in their lives, they become afraid of trying something new. And so change is always resisted, always. Because people are afraid, even if what they have is not satisfying to them, a lot of people are afraid to venture into the unknown.

You’ve got the best employees on the planet, right? They work hard and are experts in their fields. But, somewhere there is a disconnect. The culture of your organization is not everything it could be, not everything you would like. Is there a way to ensure that your employees hold to the same values you do throughout your department, or the organization? How can you empower your employees, and foster trust, growth, and loyalty? Here are nine ways to fully engage your employees.

Inspiration From the Top

The most important thing that a leader can do to improve employee engagement is to lead by example. Employees must see the owners and executives demonstrating behaviors set forth in the company’s values. They are far more likely to emulate the respected leaders of the organization than live by a disregarded handbook. Managers and business owners should take advantage of collaboration tools such as HR Software when communicating with employees. Opening up communication channels helps employees to feel more valued and inspires better communication from the bottom up.

A lot has been written about Innovation Training in the recent past. At Culturevate, we clearly see the sense of such training, but there are some important conditions that needs to be met for these efforts to generate long-term impact for an organization. Not all companies understand these conditions, which often leads to mediocre results and missed opportunities. One extra difficulty is that a good Innovation Training should be driven by and aligned with several functional parts of a large corporate organization.

An innovation training effort should be an integral part of any corporate innovation program/strategy. A concrete training effort gives a clear message that innovation should be taken seriously and supports your employees who may not know how or where to begin.

However, just launching an innovation training effort independently, without context to a company’s strategy or culture, will create confusion and generate low output at best. We prefer a model that makes use of the momentum of a training effort to explain (and reinforce) the organization’s innovation program and strategy throughout the curriculum. This way, you achieve the additional advantage that a big picture strategy is much better understood by the community and that the training fits in the big picture strategy of the company.

Innovation that Matters examines and ranks 25 cities’ readiness to capitalize on the inevitable shift to a digital economy. It carves out critical trends every U.S. city leader can learn from and offers recommendations local leaders can adopt to strengthen their region’s digital competitiveness.

We are at the dawn of an extraordinary technological revolution, and it is transforming every part of the U.S. economy. Beyond social media and e-commerce, advances are coming to every industry and leaving a wake that could be either disastrous or transformative to every city in the country. In the same way a handful of cities became major commerce centers in the industrial era, new cities will emerge as leaders in the digital economy. Yesterday’s expertise will not guarantee tomorrow’s economic wins. Without leaders who understand this and act to help their communities transition, cities will fall behind.

While the San Francisco Bay Area is the clear leader in total startup activity, its lack of a cohesive community and declining quality of life for residents helped move Boston to the top spot.

This in-depth research report written by CX Network looks at the key customer experience trends, challenges and investments for the next 12 –18 months and the digital transformation of organisations. Their annual survey gauged the views of global leaders – across all major industries – within customer experience, service, insight, digital and marketing, on the changes that will be defining the industry in 2016.

CX Network collected the data from the over 700 responses for this report, to provide insights into the trends, challenges, investment priorities that will be shaping customer experience and the digital transformation of organisations. They compared the responses from their practitioner community with that of solution providers and analysts, to see where they align and where there is a marked difference.

Key findings:

Customer loyalty and retention, CRM, and the online customer experience are the top investment priorities for the next 12-18 months

Demonstrating ROI, finding budget, and gaining board level buy-in are the top 3 challenges bringing these investments to fruition.

The e-learning industry has tremendously evolved and is continuing to evolve year after year. It has become an industry grossing tens of billions of dollars. There are numerous online platforms which have utilized different learning management system tools to make education available to their remote students. The popularity of learning management systems is expected to continually grow, as various companies have realized the potential of these tools, which can be used to teach future employees about the business in a quick manner.

But, like in every industry that grosses billions of dollars, the competition is high. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular learning management system tools and what they offer to their users; so that you can find out which learning management system is right for you.